Thursday, July 14, 2005

Should we tour?

I am interested in peoples opinions about whether the NZ cricket team should tour Zimbabwe? Their is a lot of pressure being put on the government to ban the cricket team from touring due to the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and the fact that Mugabe is a patron of Zimbabwe cricket. Currently the governments stance is that they can not stop the cricket team from touring as it was be an abuse of the NZ players human rights. They are saying it is up to NZ cricket to pull the plug. Problem is unless the government ban the NZ players from going then NZ cricket becomes liable for reimbursing the Zim team for the cost of the tour, by the time TV rights are taken into account this would be millions.

So what should happen?

My feeling is that the government should stop them from going, we can't be seen to support that regime in anyway. Although I think it is sad that the international community has done very little to stop what is going on in Zimbabwe and believe something should have been done a long time ago. It should not be left up to our sportsman to fight the political battle

Secondly the international Cricket Council should have suspended Zim from all cricket, due to the horrible conditions of this country.

I truly wonder if all the promises from the G8 will do much if we are going to fail to act in key situations like the one in Zimbabwe.

So what are your thoughts, should sports teams be used to make a political stand?

5 comments:

I don't believe the any government has the right to tell people what to do. Of course they have to when it comes to things like crime and whatever, but for peoples moral decisions it's up to that person to make the decision. Government should butt out.

I agree that Zim should be banned from all international sporting events. It's not something that is going to effect anything except the morale of the country. It's not like stopping financial aid or embargo or things like that. I was very disapointed that Australia toured recently, and I'll be honest in saying that the Aussies touring will probably be a big swing vote towards the Kiwi's going ahead with their tour. They shouldn't, but at the end of the day it is up to Kiwi Cricket. Not the government.

Just because a player is picked for the side doesn't mean he has to go. I remember back in 2001 Shane Webcke refused to tour with the Kangaroo's for the Ashes in England because of his concerns for his family while he was gone (concerns over terrorism etc).